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Reflection: One of our own goes abroad

Where we love is home,
Home that our feet may leave, but not our hearts.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

In this period of our lives, many of us are moving from place to place. Some travel thousands of miles from where they were born to join us here at Clark. Others of us, including myself, embark on journeys abroad to stay for long periods, study foreign places, and join other communities. We make ties in so many locations as we travel and move through life, but what happens once we have been to all of these places and create bonds to people and to communities all over the country and world? Where can we call home? Our parents’ houses? Our dorm rooms? Our first apartments? That town we lived in during study abroad? Our state? Our Country?

I suppose that they are all home in a way. They are all places that we feel we belong, places where we can find community, and places that we have spent a length of time. Home can be different for all of us, even though we are all living in the same place. What does home mean to you?

As globalization and the internet speed up the pace of life and make the planet seem so much smaller, but there are still of course large cultural differences no matter where we go that aren’t what we are accustomed to at “home”. Once those quirks and intricacies of a culture are experienced and appreciated can we feel at home in another place.

So, as I embark on this new adventure on my semester abroad, I wish everyone at one of my homes, Clark University, a semester full of happiness and adventurous learning.